Embodiments herein generally relate to printing devices such as xerographic or electrostatic printing devices and more particularly relate to methods and systems that reduce the amount of printing resources utilized when printing e-mail messages.
Reducing paper and toner consumption not only saves printing cost, but also benefits the environment. Quite often, a document is printed with information that is not intended to be printed. One such example is e-mail printing. In most e-mail systems, the original incoming message is attached at the bottom when a reply message is composed. If another reply is made to the reply e-mail, it is also added to the string of e-mails as each e-mail is replied to. The string of replies to the original e-mail and the replies to the reply e-mails can be quite extensive. Other systems organize strings of e-mail messages into structures called “conversations”. All such files that contain a current e-mail and the preceding e-mail replies from an original e-mail (strings of reply e-mails) are considered “accumulated” e-mail messages in the description herein.
For a message that has experienced multiple RE (reply) iterations, the e-mail file could be very long. Quite often, a user may only be interested in printing out the most recent message or messages, but when the user clicks the print button, the entire history of the interaction containing many pages is printed.
In view of these issues, the embodiments herein provide a method that receives an instruction to print an accumulation e-mail message through a graphic user interface of a computerized device. The “accumulation” e-mail comprises an original e-mail message and one or more reply e-mail messages made to the original e-mail message. The reply e-mail messages can be made to the original e-mail message or to other reply e-mail messages. Thus, the original e-mail message and the reply e-mail messages comprise a historical chronology of replies made to the original e-mail message and to the reply-messages.
The embodiments herein automatically identify boundaries between the e-mail messages within the accumulation e-mail message using the computerized device. For example, the embodiments herein can identify the boundaries by matching pre-established header templates to text within the accumulation e-mail message to identify a beginning point of each e-mail message. The text immediately before the beginning of each e-mail message represents the end of an immediately adjacent e-mail message.
Once in the beginning and ending locations of each e-mail message has been identified, the embodiments herein can automatically truncate (remove, delete) the original e-mail message and one or more of the reply e-mail messages from the accumulation e-mail message to create a modified accumulation e-mail message using the computerized device.
The truncating is based on pre-established truncation rules that can be set up by receiving user truncation preferences. The pre-established truncation rules can be very flexible and provide many different user options. This truncating process can, for example, remove all e-mail messages except the most recent e-mail message from the accumulation e-mail message to create the modified accumulation e-mail message. Alternatively, a certain number of the most recent e-mail messages (2, 4, 6) or a certain number of pages of complete e-mail messages can be allowed to remain within the modified accumulation e-mail message, again depending upon the user truncation preferences. Similarly, the user can set the pre-established truncation rules to only include the original e-mail message and the most recent e-mail message (or a certain number of most recent e-mail messages). One ordinarily skilled in the art would understand from these examples that the user preferences can be very flexible and can include many other choices regarding which e-mail messages are truncated and which e-mail messages are allowed to remain within the modified accumulation e-mail message.
Since the user has provided the instruction to print the accumulation e-mail message, the embodiments herein automatically print the modified accumulation e-mail message using a printing device.
System and device embodiments herein include a processor and a computer-readable storage medium operatively connected to (directly or indirectly connected to) the processor. The computer readable-storage medium stores instructions executable by the processor. A graphic user interface is operatively connected to the processor. The graphic user interface receives the instruction from the user to print the accumulation e-mail message. In addition, a printing device is operatively connected to the processor.
The processor executes the instructions to automatically identify boundaries between the e-mail messages within the accumulation e-mail message by matching pre-established header templates to text within the accumulation e-mail message, so as to identify the beginning point of each e-mail message and the ending point of each subsequent e-mail message.
The processor also executes the instructions to automatically truncate the original e-mail message and one or more of the reply e-mail messages from the accumulation e-mail message to create the modified accumulation e-mail message. In doing so, the processor is following the pre-established truncation rules set up by the user, which can be maintained within the computer-readable storage medium. The processor further executes the instructions to automatically print the modified accumulation e-mail message using the printing device.
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.